... This may be a counterreaction to the long-time vocal majority of "zealots" (as perceived by most of the rest of the world) who espouse Stallmanesque philosophies.
I don't think the idealists are the zealots they are made out to be. They aren't the ones who whine for companies to open their source. They aren't the ones who obsessed over the Mindcraft study. And I very much doubt they are the ones who send nasty emails, who put up Linux as being more than it is, who want to destroy Microsoft...
Maybe the idealists are focused on freedom, and maybe compromise isn't their nature. But people who jump on bandwagons are the ones that make the wagon look bad. GNU has been there all along. And maybe people thought it was communist, judgemental, impractical, maybe naive... but not obnoxious or immature.
I don't think there's much to gain in purging idealism. [though even if there was something to gain, it would still be wrong]
I think everybody who has concretely contributed to his/her business deserves the wealth he/she receives.
How could they possibly deserve the wealth they have? Is any one person worth that much more than another?
You should appreciate the scale of their wealth. This is not like making $20,000 a year vs. $100,000. The wealth is astronomical.
A very well paid person could make $100/hour. If they work hard -- an average of 16 hours a day every day -- they can reach Bill Gates' wealth within a mere 150 millenia. I'm not sure how much Larry Ellison is worth, but that same honest person would still have to work several millenia to match his wealth.
Now, did either of these men really work that hard? Is it even possible for one person to work that hard?
Any sane person would say no. Any reasonable person would say their wealth is beyond justification. Even Wozniak, though he has the soul of a hacker, did not earn his wealth.
(and don't give me any of that "risk" bull either -- I've yet to see one destitute executive)
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19:24)
I'm not myself a Christian, but things like that which make it somewhat seductive. Would that there were any Real Christians left, or at least that fundamentalists would concern themselves with social issues outside of homosexuality and abortion. But that's another issue entirely...
What do you possibly think the FSF is going to do? Suddenly start charging for all GPLed software?
While FSF/GNU/RMS does want everyone to use GPLed software and documentation, this is still not predatory. These works are, by definition, free! What are you complaining about?
Are they going to hijack standards? They can't -- it's all free to modify, so things can be made standards compliant despite the most malicious intents.
Are they going to integrate products that are more restricted? The FSF and GNU have shown no inclination to do this, and the GPL does its best to keep this from happening.
Are they going to force everyone who uses GPLed code to GPL derivative works? Yes. Do they have any desire to support or assist proprietary software developement? No. Could they set up a situation where they could exclude proprietary products from a GNU system? Yes (potentially, though not necessarily).
But none of this involves predation. The freedoms you have now, and the rights which the GPL gives, are freedoms that are not going to change if GPLed software dominates the market. In the case of IE, Microsoft had other products to protect and promote using IE -- the FSF applies the GPL uniformly and completely.
GPLed products have the potential to be vastly superior to proprietary products -- simply because they are copylefted. They have the potential to allow the integration and diversification of ideas in the computer science field that could be incredibly beneficial. They have the potential to make good software available to everyone and to do some part in checking the increasing disparity in resources. GPLed software has the potential to eliminate the competition, but that doesn't make it bad.
[and yes, the FSF does reserve the right to change the GPL. However, anything released under version 2 of the GPL will remain covered by this version forever, so if later versions are more restrictive they don't need to be obeyed. I still don't know just what you think will show up in later versions, but...]
You equate illegal with immoral. These two things are most certainly not the same.
Where do laws come from? Sometimes society, which generally condemns murder, stealing, etc. And most people won't break these laws because they might get caught -- they won't break these laws because they are immoral. If murder was legal almost all people would still not murder.
But a lot of laws come from the government and the powers that control it. Tax laws, subsidies, copyright... These are nondemocratic laws -- when you understand that democracy is not about process (e.g., voting) but about rule by the people (demos people, kratia rule). This isn't to say the laws are meant to disempower people (they may or may not), and it isn't to say that democracy is inherently moral and good (the United States founding fathers had no love for the term).
Copyright is where the law is clearly undemocratic -- not just neutral, but in opposition to the social standards by which people live. Why do I say this? Because so many people violate copyright. In fact, most people have violated copyright laws. Few of them feel bad about it. Many would do so freely and constantly if it weren't for copyright protections (including difficulties of support) and the risk of getting caught. Maybe they are all wrong and immoral -- not impossible -- but that is how people are.
So call copyright violation illegal -- that's certainly true -- but don't equate it with stealing from a bank. And think about what it means when you so vigorously condemn one person for being brave enough to say what everyone else believes (as shown by their actions).
Is your position tenable? Is it pragmatic? And when you take away all the laws, is it right?
I'll first address your notion of predatory pricing. Predatory pricing is when something is priced low to destroy competition, at which time the price is raised. Free software and documentation will remain free. Forever. The FSF will never leverage Free software to force people to use unfree software or documentation (though, unfortunately, others might try to do so against the FSF's wishes). The FSF and GNU are clearly not predatory.
Your allegiance to the Powers that Be -- in the form of protecting current business models and companies -- is not shared by all. I do not consider the current economic system a just one -- the suffering it is creating worldwide is barbaric and to attempt to maintain it would be an extremely immoral thing for me to do. IMHO. Obviously yours is different, but I don't think maintaining the status quo is a tenable moral position.
To address your desire to make metaphors between physical property and intellectual property I'll quote from Why Software Should Not Have Owners:
Authors often claim a special connection with programs they have written, and go on to assert that, as a result, their desires and interests concerning the program simply outweigh those of anyone else---or even those of the whole rest of the world. (Typically companies, not authors, hold the copyrights on software, but we are expected to ignore this discrepancy.)
To those who propose this as an ethical axiom---the author is more important than you---I can only say that I, a notable software author myself, call it bunk.
But people in general are only likely to feel any sympathy with the natural rights claims for two reasons.
One reason is an overstretched analogy with material objects. When I cook spaghetti, I do object if someone else eats it, because then I cannot eat it. His action hurts me exactly as much as it benefits him; only one of us can eat the spaghetti, so the question is, which? The smallest distinction between us is enough to tip the ethical balance.
But whether you run or change a program I wrote affects you directly and me only indirectly. Whether you give a copy to your friend affects you and your friend much more than it affects me. I shouldn't have the power to tell you not to do these things. No one should.
Re:Corel support Open Source, no really they do !
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Corel Linux FAQ
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There's two things here: the CLD and the Corel Office apps.
From everything they say about the CLD it sounds like a good deal. Everything they do will remain Free (speach), and as such it will be possible to fold them into non-CLD efforts. And because the CLD will be Free, if they bundle CLD with Wordperfect et. al. it won't be a problem -- it'll be easy enough to strip the proprietary parts from the distribution and for Cheapbytes to sell it, as they most likely will. I don't see how the CLD can do any harm, and it could do a lot of good.
As for Corel's proprietary apps, I suppose it's nice they exist for Linux but it's nothing to be excited about. Opening them up wouldn't be too useful. Netscape is the only one to really do this seriously, and though it's been somewhat successful, there's been significant problems. A bizaar-style app has to be designed differently, I think, with minimalism and a carefully modular design. I doubt that's the case with a program with a long history like Wordperfect.
Because of the licensed software Corel uses they'd probably need their own license (like the Netscape Public License) which seriously decreased the value of the software. Only Netscape/Mozilla apps can really use Mozilla code -- Gnome, for instance, can't cut and paste useful bits of code from Mozilla. The same would probably be true for Open Sourced Corel apps.
This is why the license proliferation sucks. Cross-polination is part of what makes Free software good, and license incompatibilities damage that. Somehow I imagine that much of the software under different licenses will whither or never expand outside of the proprietary niches they previously occupied, and eventually leave just the GPL and XFree-ish licenses.
I agree -- the reviews are becoming very repetitious. But what I'd like to hear is a review that doesn't cover installation. Imagine you are given a computer with a good installation of some Linux distribution -- now, how good is it?
Most reviewers never get past installation, it seems, and are too lazy to talk about whether Linux and its associated apps are actually a good operating system and environment. Of course, to do that you have to use it for a while after you've installed it.
I, for one, appreciate a non-lethal alternative on both the legal and non-legal sides of the coin. Is it possible that law enforcement would be less hesitant to use these weapons than guns? Sure. But the person on the other end would also be less dead.
In a way, I think this makes it more dangerous than a gun.
Like chemical weapons, it sounds like it would be fairly easy to protect against this weapon if you expected it. And like chemical weapons, its primary use would be against civilians who were not expecting it. It would work great on demonstrators.
Considering the level of police brutality in the US this weapon seems quite dangerous. Consider the cases of police applying pepper spray to handcuffed people's eyes with Q-tips (specifically the case with Earth First in Oregon, but this has been done on other occasions as well). Remember watching Rodney King lying on the ground, being hit with a taser over and over? Giving these people more tools to cause pain is very dangerous.
Being able to torture people at an increased distance isn't a positive force. And this is clearly a tool of torture.
cause with unix you leave as much as possible in user space. and up to now it's worked fine, where we ran a trusted server process which could access the graphics card.
Graphics are Linux's biggest instability. Needing to suid SVGAlib programs to root is insanely insecure. X is a bit more trusted, but running X suid root is, effectively, making X an OS process. Just one that isn't directly included inside the Linux kernel. That's just poor design.
I don't know how good the KGI design is. From my lay view, it seems to be pretty good. ggilib looks really neat, though I don't know how much it depends on KGI. Anyways, I could be wrong about it all. However, one way or the other graphics definately should be in the kernel. fbcon is a step in the right direction, but not complete.
Can anyone tell me how fast the Linux version runs on the minimum hardware? Is it usuable?
I don't care about animations, but (for example) Alpha Centauri is quite annoying on my hardware (under Windows). [as an aside: I found Alpha Centauri kind of boring compared to Civ2, the landscape has no personality and the advances are all too theoretical/contrived]
On the other hand, a proof that P != NP would prove that anything based on an NP-complete trapdoor function (I'll get back to this) is sound against anything short of a quantum computing attack.
I don't think this is necessarily true. I think it's possible that there are ways that computation could be done more quickly for a specific problem.
For instance, there has been research using a warm tank of amino acids, allowing them to mix and match themselves. The ways in which they connect can be turned into a solution to an NP problem. That is, in effect, parellel computing at its height -- millions of simultanious computations. The computations are nondeterministic and statistical, but statistics usually pan out.
While the procedure for using this device needs to be clarified for privacy reasons, I actually welcome better security at US airports.
Given the huge number of hijackings that occur on US flights, it should be a given that greater protection is needed.
Oh, wait, I forgot: NOTHING EVER HAPPENS ON FLIGHTS!
If we needed better security we'd have more problems. Now we have no -- ZERO -- problems with security in and around airports. However, we get five minute reminders to be suspicious of everyone around us, we have our privacy being invaded (profiling), we can't take scissors on the flight. It's insane, and everytime I'm in an airport I feel like I'm in the movie Brazil.
However, you shouldn't feel too unsafe. They will be thorough when there's any reason to be suspicious. I was on a one-way flight to Mexico City and was searched very thoroughly: they opened all my bags, they inquired as to what I was planning to do there (and were persistant, because I was vague), they carefully inspected my alarm clock (which had a battery in it). So, depending on who you are and what your plans are you get very different security measures.
But consider - when your principal and dean were in high school, which group did they belong to? It's a self-perpetuating system...
Ironically, I don't think administration tends to come from the popular groups. The system of self-hate and envy often makes high school's rejects its later proponents.
A lot of people find something else to be part of -- their own small clique, some interest that can give them identity. But a lot of people don't find these things -- they are lost, hoping to belong and making pathetic attempts to be part of something they cannot have.
And those kids make sad cliques, where they all hate each other as much as they hate themselves. Many geeks out there must have had the experience of trying to make a friend with one of these sorts, but being rejected because they didn't want friendship as much as social promotion, and geeks lead to little social promotion. (I think this happens more among girls than boys)
When these not-quite-geeks grow up they won't condemn the system. They have too much emotion invested in it -- more emotion than the popular people even. They are many of the people who make up administration -- the popular people generally find better jobs.
I find the circularity of that class of teens much sadder than the geeks -- at least we have a way out.
From what I gather you feel that "friendly people" do good, but "Friendly people within companies" don't make for a "friendly company".
The company exists outside of the individuals that form it. That's what limited liability corporations are all about. At any one time a corporation's true motivation (profit) may coincide with being nice. But as soon as that changes (and change it will) the corporation will follow profit.
Well, you obviously don't realize that the Mac community is probably stronger and more vehement than the Linux Community. Just because it's not _your_ community, doesn't mean that Open Source won't work for Macintosh fans.
The Mac community might be bigger, but they don't do much programming. They might be able to make more noise than Linux people (maybe), but Free Software/Open Source doesn't need noise, it needs programmers.
Be thankful for what Apple's giving out.
Something about that quote strikes me as very Uncle Tom. Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme -- we're not oppressed or anything. But there are good companies out there. A few. Apple isn't one of them by a long ways.
More importantly, there are many good people out there. They really deserve the credit for what's been done, and I believe they are going to be the one's that continue to be the soul of the movement. Apple is just a money-grubbing corporation. All publicly-held corporations are, so Apple isn't unique or anything. It's only actual people (sans press releases, sans business plans) that do good things because they are good. I'll give my thanks to them.
I'm afraid Mac fans have mistaken PR about "thinking different" for real creativity, friendly interfaces for a friendly company.
I have heard from RMS that the FSF encourages individual people to hold the copyrights of software so that if the FSF was sued or some such thing then the software would not be in danger as no one person held the copyrights - you can't sue the masses.
The opposite, actually. The FSF asks that anyone contributing significantly (10 lines of code?) to a project distributed by GNU/FSF assign copyright to the FSF. Of course, you don't have to do this. But they are pretty strict about not distributing your patch/fix/extension unless you do assign copyright.
They do this because they feel they can better defend the license if they hold complete copyright over a piece of code -- i.e., if someone inappropriately uses some GNU GPLed code the FSF can sue them and they don't need to collect all the original authors for the suit. It's strictly for legal, not philosophical reasons.
...after all the first word in the license is GNU.
If you want to be legalistic about it, I suppose there isn't a difference. But the emphasis on legalism distracts from the real point.
There is a big philosophical difference between the two. For Free Software the license issue is largely solved -- GPL -- but for Open Source it's a constantly renewed question.
So, if I was going to make a list of criteria for a Free Software license, it would be: It should be the GPL, or LGPL if there's a compelling reason. So simple, leads to little confusion, will not cause dillution...
My point is RMS has no right to hoard all the credit anymore than anyone else does.
Does RMS ever ask anything to be named after himself? He wants GNU to get some of the credit it deserves, as well as let new and potential users understand that GNU is a significant part of Linux. GNU is a lot of people, most of which seem to be pretty quiet. But most of them worked for the GNU ideal, and that ideal deserves a bit of credit, a bit of publicity.
Still, I can sympathize with RMS feeling that Linus is getting all the glory, and certainly he could publically share a little more credit.
I don't think I've seen RMS ever mention a problem with Linus, but rather with Linux. And though he has at times wanted a bit of credit, he's never asked for his name to be used anywhere -- only GNU. There is real political issues here, and GNU is the most political of all the various Free Software groups.
Wouldn't you be annoyed if you and a group of other people worked long and hard, doing as much work as the Linux kernel people, the distribution people, and all the other people who brand Linux, but the name of your group never showed up anywhere? Might almost be enough to make you wish you had a BSD license...:P
(And to his credit, Linux was named after Linus, not by him)
One thing that few people have commented on is the fact that some software just won't ever be free. If free software comes about because it scratches a developer's "itch," as ESR puts it, then what developer in the world would have the "itch" to create a totally free supply-chain management application on an IBM S/390?
Not everything has been created because of an itch. There has to be some motivation, but it isn't always an I-need-to-have-this-software sort of motivation. GNU is the most prominant example of this -- a lot of software written under the GNU name is boring software that no one was itching to write. But people wrote it anyway because they believed in the ideals of GNU. That's why the GNU contribution has been so important.
OTOH I couldn't care the least if no one volunteers to make corporate software. And so SMP support in Linux doesn't excite me, nor do the Big Databases.
I really get annoyed with the emphasis on e-commerce that Berners-Lee and his ilk have had. Everything I see coming out of the "web innovation" stuff is new ways to get people to spend money. Security for e-commerce, IDs for e-commerce, searching for e-commerce... how terribly dull.
It makes it hard to argue against the anti-Internet/anti-technology people when so many people arguing for the Internet see it as nothing more than a way to sell products. People who read about the Internet from the mass media have every reason to be scared of it -- it sounds horrible from that perspective.
He wants a separation between free and nonfree software. He want two sets of water fountains, he wants clear delineation between fronts and backs of the bus.
Whoa there, time to calm down.
I agree that RMS wants to force people to make free software. But all those proprietary software companies want to force you not to copy their software (or at least to pay first). The GPL fights fire with fire. The permissive licenses don't fight at all.
That's okay... you're allowed not to fight. A permissive license does no harm. But can you really blame someone who does want to fight? And don't they have some obligation to try to convince you to do the same?
I agree with you that ethics are very important. But are they really illogical?
I have to agree with him on this one. Finding a logical basis for ethics is overly optimistic. Our actions can follow logically from our ethics, but our ethics follow from something without logical basis. Even the most rational of philosophical beliefs will eventually lead to belief without logic.
The question is: what do you believe? What do you want, for yourself and the world around you? The answers aren't obvious and everyone isn't going to answer them the same. But I don't worry about that so much as all the people who never ask the questions or never let their answers become action.
I think it's absurd to blather on about the superiority of the GPL and GPL'd software when most of the vital GPL'd code consists entirely of unoriginal imitations of original, non-GPL'd, work done by others.
Stallman has never said (unlike O'Reilly or ESR) that GPL software is inherently superior on a technical basis. He has said GPL software is superior on a moral basis. This moral basis is something he clearly did not copy from proprietary software, though he very openly says he did copy it from earlier CS work (which was all free).
RMS' motivations for creating free software are very different than O'Reilly's. And of all the things you can accuse RMS of, hypocrisy is certainly not one of them.
I'm not so sure about my name and address being sold as trafficking in human souls--there are simply things so much more serious than that taking place that need to be addressed and aren't.
I certainly wouldn't be among the "we need to fix things at home before we fix the rest of the world". In fact, those people really annoy me, because they are just so deluded as to our role... but...
The issues of address lists, and more generally advertising as a whole, is a serious one. It's a matter of selling our minds. Now, this is not oppression on the scale that it is happening in most places. But it is insidious and dangerous (that banner at the top of the page included!)
We are the ones who are the receivers of many of the benefits of oppression. Most slashdotters are clearly members of the international elite (even if a number of us chose not to partake fully in it). If we cannot be clear-minded -- cannot understand what we are doing and why -- than our ethics cannot save us. Advertising is all about muddling our thoughts. From the mundane nature of a banner add that looks like a Win95 window to the spin-doctors that make us think a medicine factory is some chemical weapons production.
(p.s., Junkbuster will get rid of the banner ads -- fight the Man one banner at a time! I'm not sure if I'm kidding)
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the idealists are focused on freedom, and maybe compromise isn't their nature. But people who jump on bandwagons are the ones that make the wagon look bad. GNU has been there all along. And maybe people thought it was communist, judgemental, impractical, maybe naive... but not obnoxious or immature.
I don't think there's much to gain in purging idealism. [though even if there was something to gain, it would still be wrong]
You should appreciate the scale of their wealth. This is not like making $20,000 a year vs. $100,000. The wealth is astronomical.
A very well paid person could make $100/hour. If they work hard -- an average of 16 hours a day every day -- they can reach Bill Gates' wealth within a mere 150 millenia. I'm not sure how much Larry Ellison is worth, but that same honest person would still have to work several millenia to match his wealth.
Now, did either of these men really work that hard? Is it even possible for one person to work that hard?
Any sane person would say no. Any reasonable person would say their wealth is beyond justification. Even Wozniak, though he has the soul of a hacker, did not earn his wealth.
(and don't give me any of that "risk" bull either -- I've yet to see one destitute executive)
I'm not myself a Christian, but things like that which make it somewhat seductive. Would that there were any Real Christians left, or at least that fundamentalists would concern themselves with social issues outside of homosexuality and abortion. But that's another issue entirely...While FSF/GNU/RMS does want everyone to use GPLed software and documentation, this is still not predatory. These works are, by definition, free! What are you complaining about?
Are they going to hijack standards? They can't -- it's all free to modify, so things can be made standards compliant despite the most malicious intents.
Are they going to integrate products that are more restricted? The FSF and GNU have shown no inclination to do this, and the GPL does its best to keep this from happening.
Are they going to force everyone who uses GPLed code to GPL derivative works? Yes. Do they have any desire to support or assist proprietary software developement? No. Could they set up a situation where they could exclude proprietary products from a GNU system? Yes (potentially, though not necessarily).
But none of this involves predation. The freedoms you have now, and the rights which the GPL gives, are freedoms that are not going to change if GPLed software dominates the market. In the case of IE, Microsoft had other products to protect and promote using IE -- the FSF applies the GPL uniformly and completely.
GPLed products have the potential to be vastly superior to proprietary products -- simply because they are copylefted. They have the potential to allow the integration and diversification of ideas in the computer science field that could be incredibly beneficial. They have the potential to make good software available to everyone and to do some part in checking the increasing disparity in resources. GPLed software has the potential to eliminate the competition, but that doesn't make it bad.
[and yes, the FSF does reserve the right to change the GPL. However, anything released under version 2 of the GPL will remain covered by this version forever, so if later versions are more restrictive they don't need to be obeyed. I still don't know just what you think will show up in later versions, but...]
Where do laws come from? Sometimes society, which generally condemns murder, stealing, etc. And most people won't break these laws because they might get caught -- they won't break these laws because they are immoral. If murder was legal almost all people would still not murder.
But a lot of laws come from the government and the powers that control it. Tax laws, subsidies, copyright... These are nondemocratic laws -- when you understand that democracy is not about process (e.g., voting) but about rule by the people (demos people, kratia rule). This isn't to say the laws are meant to disempower people (they may or may not), and it isn't to say that democracy is inherently moral and good (the United States founding fathers had no love for the term).
Copyright is where the law is clearly undemocratic -- not just neutral, but in opposition to the social standards by which people live. Why do I say this? Because so many people violate copyright. In fact, most people have violated copyright laws. Few of them feel bad about it. Many would do so freely and constantly if it weren't for copyright protections (including difficulties of support) and the risk of getting caught. Maybe they are all wrong and immoral -- not impossible -- but that is how people are.
So call copyright violation illegal -- that's certainly true -- but don't equate it with stealing from a bank. And think about what it means when you so vigorously condemn one person for being brave enough to say what everyone else believes (as shown by their actions).
Is your position tenable? Is it pragmatic? And when you take away all the laws, is it right?
Your allegiance to the Powers that Be -- in the form of protecting current business models and companies -- is not shared by all. I do not consider the current economic system a just one -- the suffering it is creating worldwide is barbaric and to attempt to maintain it would be an extremely immoral thing for me to do. IMHO. Obviously yours is different, but I don't think maintaining the status quo is a tenable moral position.
To address your desire to make metaphors between physical property and intellectual property I'll quote from Why Software Should Not Have Owners:
From everything they say about the CLD it sounds like a good deal. Everything they do will remain Free (speach), and as such it will be possible to fold them into non-CLD efforts. And because the CLD will be Free, if they bundle CLD with Wordperfect et. al. it won't be a problem -- it'll be easy enough to strip the proprietary parts from the distribution and for Cheapbytes to sell it, as they most likely will. I don't see how the CLD can do any harm, and it could do a lot of good.
As for Corel's proprietary apps, I suppose it's nice they exist for Linux but it's nothing to be excited about. Opening them up wouldn't be too useful. Netscape is the only one to really do this seriously, and though it's been somewhat successful, there's been significant problems. A bizaar-style app has to be designed differently, I think, with minimalism and a carefully modular design. I doubt that's the case with a program with a long history like Wordperfect.
Because of the licensed software Corel uses they'd probably need their own license (like the Netscape Public License) which seriously decreased the value of the software. Only Netscape/Mozilla apps can really use Mozilla code -- Gnome, for instance, can't cut and paste useful bits of code from Mozilla. The same would probably be true for Open Sourced Corel apps.
This is why the license proliferation sucks. Cross-polination is part of what makes Free software good, and license incompatibilities damage that. Somehow I imagine that much of the software under different licenses will whither or never expand outside of the proprietary niches they previously occupied, and eventually leave just the GPL and XFree-ish licenses.
(and good ridance)
Most reviewers never get past installation, it seems, and are too lazy to talk about whether Linux and its associated apps are actually a good operating system and environment. Of course, to do that you have to use it for a while after you've installed it.
Lazy journalists...
Like chemical weapons, it sounds like it would be fairly easy to protect against this weapon if you expected it. And like chemical weapons, its primary use would be against civilians who were not expecting it. It would work great on demonstrators.
Considering the level of police brutality in the US this weapon seems quite dangerous. Consider the cases of police applying pepper spray to handcuffed people's eyes with Q-tips (specifically the case with Earth First in Oregon, but this has been done on other occasions as well). Remember watching Rodney King lying on the ground, being hit with a taser over and over? Giving these people more tools to cause pain is very dangerous.
Being able to torture people at an increased distance isn't a positive force. And this is clearly a tool of torture.
Reading the Amnesty International 1998 Report on the US is interesting (the police stuff starts about halfway down). The AI Report on the NYPD probably also has lots of interesting thoughts, but at 260K I haven't read it.
I don't know how good the KGI design is. From my lay view, it seems to be pretty good. ggilib looks really neat, though I don't know how much it depends on KGI. Anyways, I could be wrong about it all. However, one way or the other graphics definately should be in the kernel. fbcon is a step in the right direction, but not complete.
I don't care about animations, but (for example) Alpha Centauri is quite annoying on my hardware (under Windows). [as an aside: I found Alpha Centauri kind of boring compared to Civ2, the landscape has no personality and the advances are all too theoretical/contrived]
For instance, there has been research using a warm tank of amino acids, allowing them to mix and match themselves. The ways in which they connect can be turned into a solution to an NP problem. That is, in effect, parellel computing at its height -- millions of simultanious computations. The computations are nondeterministic and statistical, but statistics usually pan out.
Oh, wait, I forgot: NOTHING EVER HAPPENS ON FLIGHTS!
If we needed better security we'd have more problems. Now we have no -- ZERO -- problems with security in and around airports. However, we get five minute reminders to be suspicious of everyone around us, we have our privacy being invaded (profiling), we can't take scissors on the flight. It's insane, and everytime I'm in an airport I feel like I'm in the movie Brazil.
However, you shouldn't feel too unsafe. They will be thorough when there's any reason to be suspicious. I was on a one-way flight to Mexico City and was searched very thoroughly: they opened all my bags, they inquired as to what I was planning to do there (and were persistant, because I was vague), they carefully inspected my alarm clock (which had a battery in it). So, depending on who you are and what your plans are you get very different security measures.
Ironically, I don't think administration tends to come from the popular groups. The system of self-hate and envy often makes high school's rejects its later proponents.
A lot of people find something else to be part of -- their own small clique, some interest that can give them identity. But a lot of people don't find these things -- they are lost, hoping to belong and making pathetic attempts to be part of something they cannot have.
And those kids make sad cliques, where they all hate each other as much as they hate themselves. Many geeks out there must have had the experience of trying to make a friend with one of these sorts, but being rejected because they didn't want friendship as much as social promotion, and geeks lead to little social promotion. (I think this happens more among girls than boys)
When these not-quite-geeks grow up they won't condemn the system. They have too much emotion invested in it -- more emotion than the popular people even. They are many of the people who make up administration -- the popular people generally find better jobs.
I find the circularity of that class of teens much sadder than the geeks -- at least we have a way out.
More importantly, there are many good people out there. They really deserve the credit for what's been done, and I believe they are going to be the one's that continue to be the soul of the movement. Apple is just a money-grubbing corporation. All publicly-held corporations are, so Apple isn't unique or anything. It's only actual people (sans press releases, sans business plans) that do good things because they are good. I'll give my thanks to them.
I'm afraid Mac fans have mistaken PR about "thinking different" for real creativity, friendly interfaces for a friendly company.
They do this because they feel they can better defend the license if they hold complete copyright over a piece of code -- i.e., if someone inappropriately uses some GNU GPLed code the FSF can sue them and they don't need to collect all the original authors for the suit. It's strictly for legal, not philosophical reasons.
Actually GPL stands for General Public License.There is a big philosophical difference between the two. For Free Software the license issue is largely solved -- GPL -- but for Open Source it's a constantly renewed question.
So, if I was going to make a list of criteria for a Free Software license, it would be: It should be the GPL, or LGPL if there's a compelling reason. So simple, leads to little confusion, will not cause dillution...
Of course, that's just me.
Does RMS ever ask anything to be named after himself? He wants GNU to get some of the credit it deserves, as well as let new and potential users understand that GNU is a significant part of Linux. GNU is a lot of people, most of which seem to be pretty quiet. But most of them worked for the GNU ideal, and that ideal deserves a bit of credit, a bit of publicity.
Wouldn't you be annoyed if you and a group of other people worked long and hard, doing as much work as the Linux kernel people, the distribution people, and all the other people who brand Linux, but the name of your group never showed up anywhere? Might almost be enough to make you wish you had a BSD license... :P
(And to his credit, Linux was named after Linus, not by him)
OTOH I couldn't care the least if no one volunteers to make corporate software. And so SMP support in Linux doesn't excite me, nor do the Big Databases.
It makes it hard to argue against the anti-Internet/anti-technology people when so many people arguing for the Internet see it as nothing more than a way to sell products. People who read about the Internet from the mass media have every reason to be scared of it -- it sounds horrible from that perspective.
I agree that RMS wants to force people to make free software. But all those proprietary software companies want to force you not to copy their software (or at least to pay first). The GPL fights fire with fire. The permissive licenses don't fight at all.
That's okay... you're allowed not to fight. A permissive license does no harm. But can you really blame someone who does want to fight? And don't they have some obligation to try to convince you to do the same?
The question is: what do you believe? What do you want, for yourself and the world around you? The answers aren't obvious and everyone isn't going to answer them the same. But I don't worry about that so much as all the people who never ask the questions or never let their answers become action.
RMS' motivations for creating free software are very different than O'Reilly's. And of all the things you can accuse RMS of, hypocrisy is certainly not one of them.
The issues of address lists, and more generally advertising as a whole, is a serious one. It's a matter of selling our minds. Now, this is not oppression on the scale that it is happening in most places. But it is insidious and dangerous (that banner at the top of the page included!)
We are the ones who are the receivers of many of the benefits of oppression. Most slashdotters are clearly members of the international elite (even if a number of us chose not to partake fully in it). If we cannot be clear-minded -- cannot understand what we are doing and why -- than our ethics cannot save us. Advertising is all about muddling our thoughts. From the mundane nature of a banner add that looks like a Win95 window to the spin-doctors that make us think a medicine factory is some chemical weapons production.
(p.s., Junkbuster will get rid of the banner ads -- fight the Man one banner at a time! I'm not sure if I'm kidding)